Appetizer - Personal Philosophy
Teaching In my career, I want the ability to mold a classroom that allows students to grow and achieve in my class through methods that allow them to express themselves honestly and comfortably. The natural state of the classroom is to have students and teacher working together to solve problems and learn from one another. While in the classroom students must be allowed some degree of control over their learning, and when a decision is made they deserve an explanation for why it was chosen by their teacher. Having an individual at the front of the classroom flex their authority with seemingly no explanation runs the risk of alienating the students and disengaging them from the lessons. I truly believe the ultimate goal is to grow a classroom environment that allows students to feel comfortable with their learning, and sows the seeds of personal interest in learning within students. I also believe that teachers have a duty to be the guiding force in the classroom determined to allow learning to occur. We are the adults in the room, and we are the individuals with professional training in the classroom. When students are being distracting for the sake of being distracting or showing unwarranted disrespect to us and fellow students it is our job to do something to put an end to this behavior. While working as this centralized figure we cannot allow students to ignore clearly defined expectations or refuse to learn while in our classroom. Their education, and their future, are in our collective hands, and that is a responsibility we need to take seriously. Unfortunately, this sometimes means we have to put our foot down and depend on systems that involve punishment to achieve our ultimate goal of educating the students in our classroom. Someone may read over the previous two paragraphs and feel as if the ideas in them are conflicting. I can understand how someone would come to this conclusion, but personally I disagree. I believe you can create an environment where students feel free to express themselves and take control of their education, while still understanding there are decisions and behavior that are not acceptable in the classroom. I am not saying this mixture will be easy to achieve. Being a teacher is a constant balancing act between being a compassionate role model and an authority figure to all of the students in your classroom. I need to know when it is alright to step aside and allow students the freedom to express themselves. I also need to know when to step into a situation and stop misguided behavior before they become a problem. It is my responsibility to help students learn in my classroom. I believe to give them this opportunity they need a healthy mixture of self-determination and inflexible boundaries. Personal Goals When we wrote our personal goals and action plan at the beginning of this semester my ideas were still a little scattered, but after EDIS 5030 I have a better idea of what I wanted to work on. Looking over my personal goals and action plan I have realized the three main goals I had wanted to communicate, but had been missing the vocabulary and experience to convey. # Come up with a plan to create a positive classroom environment where students are comfortable enough to learn. # Create a classroom management system to keep distractions at a minimum to allow students the right environmental tone to facilitate learning and growth. # Get to know my students on a more personal level so I can be what they need to succeed in my classroom These are the goals I set out for myself since the beginning of the semester. At times, they were difficult to face head on, and I often had to stop myself from avoiding the work they would take to accomplish. I still do not think I have come close to mastering any of them to be honest. But that does not mean I do not think I have made any progress. I think in many respects I have made a great deal of progress in regards to all three. I have even gotten to the point where delving deeper into them seems like an enjoyable challenge rather than a daunting chore. I may not think I have mastered them, but I also know I will not stop working on them until I have. Context I have done a lot of thinking about the context of the school the where the ideas and plans in this Classroom Come to Life project would take place. It makes the most sense to place this classroom in a large and highly populated high school like Albemarle High School. The makeup of students in the school would consist of a highly-mixed population with students from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds working within the same classrooms. I have also determined the school would use a block schedule rather than having eight periods throughout the day. As for my personal classes I believe I would be teaching two different class topics throughout the day. The first topic would be World History I consisting of mostly ninth grade students, and my second topic would be World History II consisting of mostly tenth graders. The classes themselves would probably average around twenty-six students per class period. Students would also have different readiness levels across the classes which would require me to plan for differentiation within lessons. So as you continue on through this project remember to keep this context in mind when I discuss the different plans and systems I intend to put into place.